Currently, there is no installation making it possible to continuously measure in real time metal masses in an acid solution and in particular to measure masses of uranium, plutonium and americium contained in a nitric acid solution originating from a nuclear waste reprocessing plant.
The only known method to carry out such measurements of masses does not make it possible to obtain continuous results in real time. It does not use an autonomous unit able to be qualified as a "measurement installation". In fact, according to this known method, a small sample is taken from the acid solution containing metal masses and quantitative analyses are carried out making it possible to determine the values of these metal masses in the solution.
This method has a large number of drawbacks: the measurements of the masses effected by quantitative analysis are carried out from samples of the solution and not from the entire solution. These measurements are thus not made continuously in real time, take a long time to carry out (several hours) and are only valid for a small sample of the solution. Moreover and especially for the measurements of masses of uranium, plutonium and americium in a nitric acid solution, these quantitative analysis operations need to be carried out manually inside a glove box, these manual operations proving to be sometimes dangerous.